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posted by martyb on Saturday July 10 2021, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly

Continental pirouettes: Supervolcano fed from Earth's mantle caused crustal plates to rotate:

According to the paper, a super volcano split the Earth's crust over a length of 7,500 kilometers, pushing the Indian Plate away from the African Plate. The cause was a "plume" in the Earth's mantle, i.e. a surge of hot material that welled upwards like an atomic mushroom cloud in super slow motion. It has long been known that the Indian landmass thus made its way northward and bumped into Eurasia. But a seemingly counterintuitive east-west movement of the continental plates was also part of the process. This is supported by calculations by a team led by Dutch scientist Douwe van Hinsbergen (Utrecht University) and by Bernhard Steinberger (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences).

According to the findings, the Indian Plate did not simply move away from Africa, but rotated in the process. The reason for this is the subcontinent, whose land mass acts on the much larger continental plate like an axis around which the entire plate rotates. In the south, the scissors opened, in the north they closed—there, mountain-building processes and the subduction of crustal plates were induced.

Journal Reference:
Douwe J. J. van Hinsbergen, Bernhard Steinberger, Carl Guilmette, et al. A record of plume-induced plate rotation triggering subduction initiation, Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00780-7)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @06:06AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @06:06AM (#1154550)

    That's what they call me - "super volcano."

    When I come, their world spins.

    Not my fault. But can't blame them either.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @07:15AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @07:15AM (#1154558)

      The thought of your crustal plate makes me want to vomit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @08:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @08:06AM (#1154560)

        Open wide, baby, open.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @09:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @09:43AM (#1154565)

    105 million years ago

    Oh, OK, nevermind.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @01:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 10 2021, @01:34PM (#1154590)

    With very good animations:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A_K6LSSZ_34 [youtube.com]

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